Your time is extremely valuable and it can seem like you never have enough of it. For me, I’m always trying to find ways to learn more and be more productive.

When I was in college my schedule was pretty jam packed. Being a student as well as an athlete meant that I had to get homework done, study for tests, work on group projects, go to practice and games, attend meetings and on top of that try to have somewhat of social life. This really didn’t leave much time for doing other things I enjoyed like leisure reading or learning a foreign language. Not until after I finished up my last season of football, however, did I find a way to learn more each day and really get the most value out of my time. What did I do that allowed me to really get the most out of each day of my life? Well, I’ll tell you what, it is something that is accessible to everyone and if you embrace the concept you’ll be able to learn basically anything.

Before I tell you exactly what I did I want you to do this one quick little activity. I want you to add up all the time you spend preparing and eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner or other food in a week. Add to that the time you spend driving in a week whether that is driving to school, work, getting groceries, or anything else, add up that time in the car. On top of that add any additional time you spend walking to school or traveling anywhere in a week.

For me, my total time spent doing these activities is about 800 minutes or 13.5 hours per week. This changes week to week of course, but it is a good rough estimate. You would probably agree with me that this is a large amount of time spent doing these activities each week, but the greatest part about that time is it can all be utilized efficiently. One of the greatest ways out there to learn more is to use the time spent doing activities such as the ones I mentioned to do 3 things:

Listen to Audio Books

Listen to YouTube Videos

Listen to Podcasts

Think about how much time you could spend listening to these different things and how much you could learn from doing so. Even if you spent 5 or 6 hours a week that adds up to 20+ hours a month! Compound that for a year and you get 240+ hours of knowledge that you typically wouldn’t have had! 240+ hours is the same as spending 30 work days learning about whatever it is you choose.

Now, if you have already started listening to audio books, podcasts, and YouTube videos great, but if you haven’t, you can easily start today and I’m going to give you some ways how. Let’s start with audio books. These are simply the audio version of a book (Pretty self explanatory) and can be bought for a reasonable cost online at different websites. Click herefor a few different options. You should be able to find most books in an audio book format so you can listen to them whenever you want.

Podcasts are another great way to make use of your time during these tasks. They can be downloaded off iTunes for the very low price of FREE! Let me say that one more time, FREE! That is a price that most of you should be able to afford, but I understand if that is too much for you. Like audio books, podcasts allow you to choose from many different topics that may interest you and can help you learn a bountiful amount of different things.

The last option, which I personally use every day, is YouTube. YouTube is a great resource for learning pretty much anything because of the wide variety of content they have. You are bound to find useful videos to help you learn anything. Not only that, but many different universities have YouTube channels so you can essentially listen in on lectures for FREE that would cost those students 1000s of dollars to attend. A great compiled resource to find these different educational YouTube channels can be found here.

I wish I had known about this strategy for learning earlier in my life, however, I’m extremely thankful that I know it now. Every single day I listen to different topics that are of value to me. I currently go the free route listening to YouTube videos on my phone and different podcasts on my iPod. Currently, I listen to podcasts such as “I love Marketing”, “The LifeStyle Entrepreneur”, and “Barbell Business.” On YouTube I really enjoy videos from the Fitness Business Interviews channel, Eric Thomas, Les Brown, Zig Ziglar, and then really just anything I can find on different CEOs and other people who are really changing the world. There is a ton of knowledge out there; you just have to find it. With all this being said, you don’t have to listen to audio books, podcasts, or YouTube videos all the time, but imagine how much you could learn if you spent even half of your travel time and time involved with eating listening to a few things to help motivate you, give you ideas, and help you get to where you want in life. Try doing some additional learning like this for a week and let me know how it goes! I’m sure you will be hooked and the only regret you will have is not starting sooner!

Live EPIC!

Justin

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